Description: In this lesson, students investigate the importance of branding and messaging, especially as they relate to parity products such as beer and alcohol. Students explore the “3Ps” of brand messaging – personality, position and promise – by seeing how they apply to top selling brands of beer in the United States. Students study how consumers interpret and decide whether or not to act on media messages by applying the Media Message Interpretation Process Model to an advertisement for rum. And for homework, they conduct a “3P” analysis of three ads for alcohol.

Cross-curricular Competencies

Broad Areas of Learning

To use information

To solve problems

To exercise critical judgement

To be creative

To use effective work methods

Health and Well-Being

Consumer Rights and Responsibilities

Media Literacy

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency 1: To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts

Essential Knowledge:

Uses prior knowledge and personal experience of the content of a text

Questions and talk with others to clarify and enrich interpretations

Makes predictions, confirmations and inferences, when prompted by the teacher

Makes connections to prior knowledge or to other texts

Uses different reading strategies according to the text type

Reads, listens to and views a range of self-selected and personally relevant texts that include:

Use of personal, social and cultural background and experiences to interpret texts

Develops a personal response process in the context of a community of readers through:

Discussion of responses with others individually, on small groups and in the whole class

Recount of the story and, with guidance, outline of information in a text

Development of opinions on literary or popular texts

Sharing of responses with others to clarify meaning and enrich interpretation

Comparing own responses with those of others at a beginner’s level

Discussing own response process at a beginners level

Moves beyond the initial response through:

Responses to texts in a variety of ways that include talking, writing, the Arts, Media

Early attempts to explain own views of a text

Support for own views with references to the text in small and large group discussions

Discussions of structures and features of text and their impact on the reader

Discussion of the structures and features of a text and their influence on the meaning of a text

Returning to a text to confirm interpretations and understandings in discussions with peers

Adjustment of own interpretations in the light of the responses of others at a beginner’s level

Sees a text as a construction through:

Suggestion of alternative endings or actions in a literary or popular text

Plausibility of events, characters, opinions and/or information in a text in relation to own values and experiences Identification of some of the ways in which information is presented in popular and information-based texts

Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:

Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types

Begins to identify the view of the world presented in a text through:

Making of inferences, when prompted, about the view of the world presented by the text

Discussions, with guidance, of whose voices are heard and whose are missing in a text